When should you think of App Monetization

For quite a number of game developers today, it wouldn’t have been possible to imagine the game development world without Unity game engine. It is one of the most used and developed game engines. According to Unity, they support more than 3.5 million game developers worldwide.

One recurring question among these developers and around the world is how to monetize the nonpaying game player; specifically, how can we serve ads and still maintain high user retention.

It’s a valid concern. The Internet and social media are bombarded with a lot of Ads; funny, crappy, offensive and sometimes plain boring. There’s also the issue of proper video ad placement. Why do some game developers manage to succeed while others fail?

Implementing video ads can make you lots of money, but if not done properly, it will only harm your game in various possible ways.

Unity Technologies did an extensive research about video ads and user retention, and according to their report, they have some interesting insight.

Firstly – 71% of the players said that watching ads is their preferred model of in-game payment.

Secondly, more than 60% of the players said that they would ‘very often, if not always’ engage in watching reward video ads in the game.

Compared to all other ad placement methods, this research has shown that video ads and reward video ads are by far the favorite advertisement method for larger part of the gaming community.

Other ads placement methods like full-screen images, banners and similar have proven to influence the drop-in user retention, while reward video ads implementation stabilized if not increased retention for various game developers.

Instead of blindly summarizing Unity’s report on Reward Video Ads, I want to bring a new dimension to the Reward Video Ad placement and how to reduce the undesired impact on in-App Purchase.

It’s also one of the questions shared by most game developers. Does implementing video ads in gaming influences the revenue generated from in-app purchases?

The short answer is – it depends.

As a game developer, you need to address these types of conflict while designing games. What’s the optimal IAP and reward video ads combination? Gameplay and the nature of the game should be planned from the start in a way that maximizes the revenue from both revenue sources.

Using smart game design and proper ads placement, more than 80% of developers said their in-app purchases revenue remained stable, even climbed once reward video ads were properly implemented. It’s always good to think of these aspects of monetization while designing the game.

It’s possible to integrate video ads into an already existing game, and more than 60% of developers that decided to do so experienced revenue and retention rise, but the general opinion is that these integrations should be planned.

In-game advertisement has come up quite a long way, but it’s certain it’s going to stay and most likely become even more significant in the coming years.